


Brothers in Arms

by der_tanzer



Series: Catbread [33]
Category: Riptide (TV)
Genre: M/M
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2010-12-24
Updated: 2010-12-24
Packaged: 2017-10-14 00:56:49
Rating: Explicit
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 8,347
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/143589
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/der_tanzer/pseuds/der_tanzer
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>Quinlan is invited to a reunion for members of the platoon he led in Vietnam.</p>
            </blockquote>





	Brothers in Arms

**Author's Note:**

  * For [oddmonster](https://archiveofourown.org/users/oddmonster/gifts).



“Something wrong, Lieutenant?”

They were just home from work at the store and Murray was carrying out his usual routine, turning on lights and looking for Catloaf, while Quinlan went through the day’s mail. But he’d stopped and opened a letter, which he was staring at with an expression Murray had never seen before.

“Ted? What is it?” Catloaf came down off the fridge to meow around Murray’s ankles and he picked him up absently, still looking at Quinlan. After a moment, the lieutenant handed him the letter and went into the kitchen without a word. Murray started reading, not noticing when Catloaf climbed up his chest and draped himself around his neck.

_To 2nd Lieutenant Theodore James Quinlan,_

_You are invited to a reunion of 43rd Platoon, Bravo Co., 2nd Battalion, 5th Infantry, 198th Infantry Brigade, 21st Infantry Division, to be held at the Los Angeles Regency Hilton on Saturday, December 19th, 1992. Join your brothers in arms for drinks at four, followed by dinner at six. Spouses and significant others welcome; no children please._

_Sincerely,_

_Staff Sergeant Milton Goldberg_

Below that was information for RSVP’ing, but somehow Murray doubted that his lover was planning on attending. He folded the letter back into its envelope and tucked it inside his jacket for safe-keeping.

“Lieutenant? Here, sit down and I’ll make us some spaghetti,” he said easily, joining Quinlan in the kitchen where he seemed to have gotten stuck between opening the refrigerator and taking something out. When Murray spoke behind him, he grabbed a bottle of beer and slammed the door, nearly catching his hand in it in his attempt to act casual. He shot Murray a look that dared him to comment, but after seven years together, even the absent minded genius had learned to be quiet sometimes.

Murray waited until Quinlan took a seat at the table and then put the big pot in the sink to fill with water. While that was going on, he opened a jar of sauce and dumped it into another pot, which he left on the counter while he got spices and vegetables to fix it up with. Quinlan sat and watched him, drinking his beer, until the spaghetti pot was full. He let Murray turn off the water and try to lift it, tendons standing out in his skinny arms where anyone else would have had some muscle. He was the only healthy guy Ted had ever known whose upper arms were completely smooth, and noticeably smaller than his elbow joints. And what was more, after all these years, the lieutenant found it a real turn on.

But not so much that he could watch his lover struggle indefinitely. Especially since it was sure to end with him spilling the water everywhere. So he got up and took the pot, carrying it over to the stove and then returning to his seat. Murray lit the burner and went back to chopping vegetables for the sauce. This was one area, outside his office, where Murray really shone. The same hands that were so adept at splicing and soldering wire were also beautifully skilled with a vegetable knife, as good at chopping and dicing, and even mincing, as they were with microcircuitry. Although, as with his regular work, he could hurt himself badly if startled. So Quinlan watched in silence, drinking his beer and waiting for the questions that were bound to come sometime.

Once Murray had added the peppers, onions and mushrooms to the sauce, he covered the pot and turned the flame to medium so it would heat through evenly. He spread butter lavishly over a tray of breadsticks and set it aside to go in the oven at the last minute, then added some salt and a drop of oil to the steaming pot of water, and washed his hands. Finally, when all of that was done, he sat down at the table across from Ted.

“I get the impression you’re not thrilled about this reunion thing,” he said nervously, adjusting his glasses and trying not to crack his knuckles.

“I’m not going.”

“But—why not? Lieutenant, you have to.”

“Is that so. Tell me, Colonel Bozinsky, why do I _have_ to go?”

“Well, because…” He fumbled for the letter in his jacket, all the knife wielding grace gone from his hands. He spread it out on the table, smoothed the creases, and double checked his facts. “You were the Second Lieutenant. That makes you platoon commander, right?”

“Yeah, so?”

“So, how’s it going to look if the commander doesn’t come to the reunion? They’ll be expecting you.”

“I repeat, so?”

Murray tried to come up with something, _hmmming_ and sputtering until Quinlan took the letter from him.

“Look, babe, the fact is, I can’t take you to a thing like this, and I don’t want to go alone. It’s that simple.”

“Oh. Well, why can’t you take me?”

Quinlan surprised him by chuckling as he shook his head.

“You can’t be that naïve, still, can you?”

“I guess I can, because I don’t understand. We don’t have to be _out_ or anything. I can just be a—a friend. Another old soldier.”

“You’d stick out like—well, like you always stick out. There’s no good reason for me to bring some random colonel, for one thing. You weren’t attached to our platoon, or even our division. There’s no way to explain you except by telling the truth, and I can’t do that. Not to a room full of old soldiers. That I used to command. No one likes their lieutenants anyway, you know. It ain’t the lowest rank, but it’s the cheapest and it gets the least respect. There were more casualties among lieuys than any other rank of officers because we were cheap and easy to replace. To put it in your language, we’re middle management.”

“So you think they won’t want to see you because—why? You survived?”

“Some of them, probably. It’s just—I never had any friends there. You’d have a better time if your company got together because at least you could all make your geeky jokes, reminisce about that stunt with the Baltimore phonebook or whatever. But these guys will have a lot more fun talking about me if I’m not there than they would talking to me if I was.”

“Okay, so if that _is_ true, what about you? Don’t you want to see them? Don’t you want to reminisce with the guys you led through the war? Even if you weren’t friends, exactly, don’t you want to get together and just reflect on having made it?”

“I _did_ make it, kid. I don’t need to see them to remember it by.”

“Is that your main reason, or is it really me? Because I’d be happy to go and entertain myself while you’re at the party. We could make a weekend of it. We haven’t really had a chance to get away since you were sick, and that’s been over a year now.”

“LA ain’t exactly my idea of a fabulous vacation get-away,” he said dryly. It actually reminded him of the trips they’d made during his illness, of doctors and hospitals and helpless fear.

“Okay, me either, but I’ll take what I can get. Just think about it, okay? You have a couple weeks to reply. You don’t have to decide today.”

“Your water’s boiling,” he said in answer, nodding toward the stove. Murray got up to stir the sauce and put the pasta in the water, and when he turned back to the table, Quinlan had made the letter disappear.

***

Catloaf sat alertly on the bed, his eyes tracking the two men as they went about folding their laundry and putting it away. It was a typical Saturday afternoon in their house, catching up on chores while their friends worked in the store. Later, they would split up, Quinlan going to the store and Murray with his friends to work on a case, and then the four of them would go to _Straightaway’s_ for supper. Weekends were Murray’s favorite time, working and playing and hanging around the house all on the same day. He even liked doing laundry, although the basement wasn’t his favorite place since they battled the recurring possum last month.

“Did you put cat litter on the shopping list?” Murray asked, and Catloaf’s ears pricked forward at the sound of what was almost his name.

“I think so. I won’t forget, anyway.” Quinlan tucked a polo shirt away in the dresser and reached into the basket for another. Catloaf swatted his hand as he pulled it out and Ted gave him a dirty look. “What? I said I wouldn’t forget.”

“Cats never take you at your word,” Murray told him, sliding his button-up shirt onto a hanger. “And by the time you deliver, he’ll have forgotten you promised.”

“Classic no-win scenario.”

Catloaf narrowed his eyes at Ted, then turned to Murray with a questioning meow.

“It’s the truth,” Murray told him, and Catloaf responded by jumping off the bed and scampering after a dust mote in the other room.

“Apparently cats hate the truth, too,” Quinlan said.

“Apparently.” He took the last handful of socks from the basket and sat down to roll them into pairs. For convenience sake, he and Ted wore the same white crew socks out of a communal drawer, which Murray replenished twice a year. In a lot of ways, that made him feel more married than the rest. The rings, the shared mortgage, the business—all of that paled next to the simple fact of that drawer full of socks and two hands reaching into it every morning.

Ted reached for the empty basket and Murray caught his hand, pulling him down into a hungry kiss. He hovered off-balanced for a second, then caught himself with his free hand and gently pressed Murray down on the bed.

“We don’t have time for this,” he whispered, but didn’t stop kissing the slender neck.

“Maybe tonight?” Murray suggested, tickling his spine in return.

“You got it. But first we have work to do.”

Murray kissed him again and then let go. “All right, but you have to take the basket downstairs.”

“You know,” Quinlan said, sitting up and reaching for the basket again, “there’s nothing in that basement that can hurt you.”

“What do you know? You didn’t even believe me for the first, what, three days?” he laughed.

“Yeah, but the point is I _did_ believe you in the end, and I been keeping an eye out. There’s nothing going on down there now. And you oughta be facing your fears, kid.”

“Me? _You’re_ saying that _I_ need to face _my_ fears?”

“What’s that mean?”

“It means that you should be going to your reunion,” he said bravely. “You’re giving me a hard time about my reluctance to face the undead, which, by the way, you _know_ exists, and you won’t even go to LA and have a drink with a group of men who didn’t frag you when they had the chance. They did have the chance, didn’t they?”

“Probably,” Quinlan sighed. “So what’s your point? I go to this shindig and you, what, start getting meat from the freezer again?”

“I didn’t say that,” said Murray, who kept a pistol on a shelf at the top of the basement stairs for the rare occasions when he had to go down alone. “I’m just saying fear is fear. Don’t be such a hypocrite.”

“I’m the hypocrite? Baby, I’m not the one that brought it up.” He got up and snagged the basket off the bed. Turning away, he was a little disappointed that Murray didn’t argue. He hated when there were tense feelings between them, and Murray could stew for an entire weekend with no trouble at all. Then he heard the rustle of bedding and the soft tread of slippered feet, followed by Murray’s arms snaking around his waist and the light pressure of the narrow body against his back.

“I’m sorry, Lieutenant. You’re not a hypocrite, and if you don’t want to see your old war buddies, I’ll drop it. After I remind you that you have one more week to decide and I really would like to go. You could even lie about me. Say I’m your nephew or your son or something, and I wanted to meet your friends. I can play the role, Lieutenant, really. I make a great pool guy, and this would be even easier. Pretending to be your family? That’d be a breeze.”

Quinlan gripped Murray’s arms and drew him closer, leaning his head back to beg a kiss.

“I’ll think about it, baby. And I’m not just saying that, okay? I really will. Just don’t bug me about it for a couple days.”

“All right. And I’ll take the basket downstairs if you want.”

“No, I need the exercise. You go get your papers and shit in order so we can go.”

***

That was a good day. Quinlan had a steady flow of customers until closing, and Murray made a lot of progress on the case, a man wanting to track down the boy he had loved in college twenty years ago. The _Riptide Detective Agency_ had a quiet reputation for discreetly handling cases for gay clients, a well-deserved reputation built entirely on word of mouth. They heard stories from more than one of those clients about how another private detective had laughed at the request, refused to take the case, or somehow ended up outing them. One woman had hired them to help her fight another agency that was blackmailing her with information that had been gathered ostensibly on her behalf. The _Riptide_ agency had not only gotten the other business shut down, they also brought the original case to a satisfactory close, and their quiet reputation grew.

This one would end just as well, Murray was sure. He could find the long lost lover with a minimum of trouble, and hopefully the lover would be happy to be found. They often were.

The three detectives met up with Quinlan at the restaurant and split two pitchers of beer over steaks and fries. The meal was long and leisurely, wrapping up with a chocolate soufflé that was probably too rich for Ted, but that he enjoyed nonetheless. Nick and Cody walked home after, knowing the Jimmy would be safe in _Straightaway’s_ parking lot overnight, and Murray, who had had only a single glass of beer, drove Quinlan’s car home.

It was late by then and they headed straight for bed, Quinlan turning off lights and locking doors while Murray fed Catloaf and brushed his teeth. Even though it was late November, Murray decided to forgo pajamas in the hopes that the afternoon’s advances might be continued and expanded on. Sure enough, when he slid into bed beside his husband, Quinlan drew him close and kissed him before he even got his glasses off.

“Hmm, someone’s frisky tonight,” he giggled, and it turned into a sigh as strong hands began to explore his body.

“Someone’s been waiting all week,” Ted whispered, kissing the slender throat and bony shoulders that were more arousing than any amount of muscle on another man could ever be. It troubled him that they had to wait for the weekends now, when the stress was kept to a minimum and he could sleep in before and after, but he tried hard to make up for it by giving Murray a week’s worth of pleasure each time.

Murray accepted that pleasure, magnified and returned it with soft moans and an insistent knowledge of what Quinlan needed. Submissive and pliable always worked, letting himself be manhandled and manipulated, kissed and sucked and fondled until Ted was at the breaking point. Then it was Murray’s turn to curl around him, tickling and caressing, sucking him fully erect and achingly hard, and then fastening a cock ring around the base of his shaft so he would stay that way until Murray had had enough.

Tonight it was Murray who came first, sitting in Quinlan’s lap, wrapped tight around him in every way he could manage, biting his neck to stifle frantic cries. He kept moving, rocking and thrusting, his body rippling and shuddering with reaction, and Quinlan’s hands, which had been so comforting on his back and shoulders, dropped to his hips to make him go faster. Murray leaned back, tightening his muscles and improving the angle within, as well as giving himself leverage to thrust harder. He knew by Ted’s staccato breathing and bruising grip that he was close and kept up a steady pounding rhythm until his lover pulled him upright and held him still, his body going stiff as he gasped out his orgasm.

Murray hugged him close, kissing him softly as he shuddered through the aftershocks, not attempting to pull away until Ted released him. After that, it was a quick shower, a shared glass of water, and back to bed to cuddle each other to sleep. There was very little conversation, and Quinlan fell asleep while Murray was talking about a manual he was writing, his soft voice rising and falling in carefully measured tones. He’d learned to do this when his beloved was sick and hurting, soothing away the uncertainty that even the most powerful drugs couldn’t completely eradicate, and over time Quinlan had come to depend on it. He often joked that nothing could put him to sleep as fast as the sound of Murray’s voice, but the truth behind the gentle teasing was real and Ted was grateful for it.

***

Murray woke in the coldest part of the night to the sound of his brave husband moaning in his sleep. He reached out with a murmur to quiet him, but Quinlan was caught in the grip of a nightmare so profoundly awful that nothing short of full daylight could completely break its spell. The familiar hand was foreign on his back and he struck out at it with a sob of fear, hitting Murray’s still fragile left arm and tearing a surprised cry from him as well. Murray turned over and switched on the lamp before it could go any farther, and Quinlan sat up, scrambling blindly away from an enemy known only to him.

“Lieutenant,” Murray shouted, his voice sharp with worry. “It’s okay. You’re okay.”

Quinlan scrubbed his hand over his face, rubbed his eyes, and tried to decide if he was or not.

“Jesus,” he said at last. “Jesus God, that was the worst fucking dream I ever had.”

“It sounded bad. Do you want to come back to bed?”

“No, I have to get up,” he said harshly, trying to keep the tremble from his voice. He slid out of bed, grabbed his robe off the chair, and was belting it as he fled the room. Murray, confused but less frightened now that he knew what was going on, put on his own robe and followed.

Quinlan was in the bathroom so Murray went to the kitchen and put two mugs of water in the microwave for tea. Something soothing and caffeine free, he thought, pondering the selection in the cupboard. The lieutenant didn’t care for Chamomile, but he did like Earl Grey, and they kept decaf on hand. Murray got lemon for himself, and the bags were steeping in their cups when Quinlan finally joined him.

“You didn’t have to get up,” he said apologetically, sitting down at the table and wrapping his hands around the hot mug.

“I wanted to. Are you okay now?”

“No, not really.” He saw how Murray rubbed his left arm with his right hand and winced at the realization that he’d hurt him. “What about you? Your arm okay?”

“It’s fine. Just a little twinge, you know. More of a nervous habit than anything,” he said and sipped his tea to stop the babbling.

“Yeah, well, I’m sorry anyway. It was one of those dreams where touching ain’t a good idea.”

“It’s all I can do,” Murray whispered, stabbing his heart anew.

“I know. You should go back to bed, kid. No reason for both of us to be up all night.”

“It’s okay. I couldn’t sleep knowing you were sitting out here by yourself after a nightmare that bad. I mean, it must have been terrible because you never cry in your sleep. And you know you’d sit up with me if I were in your place.”

“You like comforting more than I do.”

“You like it, too. Do you want to tell me about it, Lieutenant? The dream, I mean? Sometimes that helps.”

“I don’t know if it would,” he dissembled.

“But it might. It won’t make it worse, right?”

“It was—I—I was back incountry.” He said it rapidly, all one word, as many of the older vets did. Murray sipped his tea, knowing that if Ted was dreaming about the war, it was his fault. “You were there,” he added, and Murray almost choked on his tea.

“Me? But I never…”

“It was a dream, baby. It doesn’t have to match reality. Anyway, you were a part of my platoon, along with all the guys who were really there and a few others who weren’t. Theo, Cody, some of the guys from the department—just about everyone I ever known. We—we started drawing fire from somewhere—we were in thick cover and I couldn’t see shit…Guys were going down all over. Cody—he—well, never mind. My radio operator was yelling for air support and then he just—just blew apart.”

“Oh, Ted…”

“You wanted to hear it,” he said, not unkindly. “So we were firing back in every direction and not hitting shit, and then everything started to change. We weren’t under cover anymore, we were in a clearing. They were picking us off from the edges and we didn’t have nowhere to go. You were yelling something, asking me what to do, I think, and then some sl—some Charlie—put a bullet in your head.”

Murray shivered, barely managing to put his cup down without spilling it.

“You stopped yelling for instructions and just started screaming. No matter how many times they shot you, you just kept screaming. Then I realized I was taking rounds, too. It hurt but it didn’t kill me. I kept thinking I should die, but I didn’t. I couldn’t. Then those little fuckers came out of the bush with machetes and they just—they—and we—we just couldn’t die.”

“Oh, Lieutenant,” Murray sighed. “I’m so sorry.”

“You’re sorry? What for?”

“I’ve been sleeping with you for seven years and you’ve never had a dream like that. It’s because of the reunion, isn’t it? I kept nagging you about it and now it’s infiltrated your subconscious.”

“Murray, baby, it’s always _been_ in my subconscious. That’s where I _keep_ it.”

“Maybe it’s a sign of internal conflict, then. The warfare, the struggling, the fact that I was in the middle of it—what do you think that means?”

“How the fuck do I know? I ain’t a shrink.”

“No, but you know yourself pretty well. And you got that invitation almost a week ago. Why have the dream now and not then?”

“Because,” he sighed, rubbing his tired eyes, “I was starting to think about going.”

“Oh,” Murray said, and they were silent for a moment. Then, “I’ll get us some more tea.”

***

“I almost miss late night TV,” Quinlan muttered, stretching out on the sofa. Murray was slouched down low, feet on the coffee table, his flat, non-muscular stomach making a soft pillow for his husband to rest his head on.

“I kind of missed this,” Murray agreed. “The one not-terrible thing that came out of all _that_ was the late night bonding when you couldn’t sleep. Well, that and the bonding all the rest of the time, too.”

“Yeah, we spent a lot of quality time together. But we still do. Nothing much has changed, has it?”

He could have spent the rest of the night listing all the things that had changed since Ted beat his cancer and got on with his life, but at the heart of it those things didn’t matter very much. Right now, the only really relevant difference was that they’d changed the rules regarding who got to lie down on the sofa and who had to sit up. It used to always be Murray with his head in Quinlan’s lap, but now the more comfortable place went to the one who was feeling the worst. Ted was the one who’d had the nightmare, so he was the one who got to be cuddled and held.

“No, Lieutenant. Nothing much.”

“But I’m not watching that Ronco Popeil shit. I don’t care how great an invention the Pocket Fisherman really is, I can’t sit through a half hour about it.”

“It’s three-thirty in the morning, Lieutenant. We can’t exactly be choosers.” Murray flipped through the channels briskly, saw Ron Popeil pitching the Veg-o-Matic, and skipped on with a grin. He finally settled on their one pay channel, which at the very least had the benefit of being commercial free. “Ooh, _Honey, I Shrunk the Kids_. I love this movie.”

“You would.”

“The science is sketchy, of course, and some of the prop proportions are off, but it’s still fun. And you’re going to fall asleep, anyway.”

“I hope so,” Quinlan said sincerely. They’d each consumed about a quart of tea while he talked out the lingering horror of his dream and the relative merits of attending the reunion. He felt better now, but was still too spooked to go back to bed. That would be too much like returning to the scene of the crime. He could sleep on the sofa, though, with the lights and the TV on, and Murray would sit up with him until he woke again.

***

Twelve hours later they were at the grocery store, Murray examining pints of strawberries while Quinlan put apples in a plastic bag. There were very few people there, considering it was just two weeks before Christmas. But Redondo Beach, though sunny and sweet year round, was only really crowded in the summer. On this Sunday afternoon, only their friends and neighbors prowled the aisles of the local grocery, and many people greeted them as they passed.

“You want plums, babe?” Quinlan asked, putting the apples in their cart.

“Sure.” He finally settled on a basket of berries and set it carefully beside the apples. “Get a bunch of bananas, too, okay?”

Murray wandered over to the vegetables to bag up some carrots, and Quinlan joined him a moment later.

“I called the Staff Sergeant this morning,” he said casually as he examined cucumbers. They could have a really nice salad tonight, and Murray could make his famous deep-fried chicken fingers.

“You did? What’d you say?”

“Told him to put me down for two and reserved a room at the hotel. They booked an entire floor for the guys from out of town.”

“You don’t want to drive back?”

“You said you wanted to make a weekend of it,” he whispered. Murray blushed prettily, ducking his head.

“I didn’t mean in the same hotel as everyone else. What if they, you know, see something?”

“Probably all have dirty imaginations anyway,” Quinlan grinned. “And so what if they do? I’m not a soldier anymore, they can’t change my discharge to dishonorable or take away my benefits. The worst they can do is run us out of their little party, and if they do that, we’ll go to another hotel and have a better one.”

“Really? You wouldn’t be too offended or—or embarrassed? I mean, these are guys you commanded. You know, as much as a lieutenant commands anyone,” he added with a wink.

“Don’t push it. Anyway, I won’t give them the chance to embarrass me. If it looks like it’s going that way, we’ll leave. I wouldn’t risk letting a bunch of bigoted old soldiers hurt you. But maybe we can pull it off. I want to try, at least. You were right. I made it through and I need to see some other guys who did.”

“I’m glad, Lieutenant. It’ll do you a lot of good, I think. And I’ll do my best not to be too obvious.”

“You’ll be fine. Go get some of that arugula, would you? And radishes.”

“Mmm, radishes. I hope they’re sharper than last time. Bland radishes are the worst.”

“Get some green bell peppers, too, then. Those are always nice and sharp.”

“Back-up veggies. Good idea.”

Quinlan absentmindedly bagged a bunch of celery, watching Murray look for the best peppers. He did want closure on that part of his life, he realized. He wanted to see the boys he’d led through the horrors of a foreign war (they called it a police action, but Ted Quinlan knew from police and that was bullshit) when they were some of them still in their teens, and know that they’d gone on to live real lives. The wounded had troubled him when they were evacced from the field, and haunted his dreams during the first year home, but he hadn’t kept track of them. It was the captains and the majors who visited hospitals and wrote home to parents. Lieutenants just kept dragging their ungrateful troops through the mud and sludge, doing their best to hold platoons together and demanding the respect due to rank because it would never be accorded willingly.

“I wonder,” he said to Murray as they pondered the variety of ham at the deli, “if those guys are going to be surprised that I’m even still alive.”

“Why wouldn’t you be?”

“I was the old man in the company. There were major generals out there younger than me. Most of these guys are gonna be closer to your age than mine.”

“Well, that’ll help me blend in, at least.”

If they’d been in the parking lot, Quinlan would have kissed him, and maybe squeezed his ass, for that. But standing at the deli counter, all he could do was give Murray a smirk that promised it wouldn’t be forgotten.

***

Although they arrived at the hotel before noon, there were already a few soldiers there, hanging around the lobby to see who was coming. Quinlan recognized Staff Sergeant Goldberg sitting behind a small table, mostly bald now and wearing thick glasses, but still the same overly organized nerd he’d always been, even in battle. Not unlike Murray, which was a little bit funny, now that he thought about it.

“Lieutenant Quinlan,” he called, standing and snapping a salute. Quinlan saluted in return, seeing that skinny little Milton Goldberg was wearing oak leaves now. He wondered how many others had stayed in and been promoted after his wounds got him shipped out, first to Pearl Harbor and then to Walter Reed for extensive rehab. For the first time, it occurred to him that he could be the lowest ranking man here.

“Major Goldberg,” he said, a touch sardonically. “How’d you manage that?”

“Heroism under fire, sir. And then I kissed a lot of ass once I was stateside again.”

“So, you’re career Army?”

“Yes, sir. A few of the guys are already in the lounge. They were asking about you.”

“Let me guess, afraid I was going to bring the bazooka?”

Major Goldberg laughed long and loud, startling Murray, who was observing the interaction like a cat on the edge of a dogfight.

“Matter of fact, Stuyvesant mentioned that. If you don’t see him in the lounge, he’s probably in the john.”

“That guy spent more time in the latrine than any corporal I ever saw,” Quinlan laughed.  
“Oh, Major, this is a friend of mine, Murray Bozinsky. Colonel Bozinsky, actually, but he didn’t want to come in uniform.”

Because of that, Goldberg wasn’t required to salute Murray, but he did so out of respect for his old commanding officer. Murray saluted in return.

“Pleased to meet you, Colonel—Barinski, was it?”

“Bozinsky,” he corrected shyly.

“Bozinsky, yes sir. I’ll remember that. If you want to check in and get settled in your rooms, you’ve got a few hours before happy hour officially starts. But if you want to come down early, you won’t lack for company.”

“You got it. Oh, say,” he added, trying to sound nonchalant. “Any word on Corporal Tjaarda? Was he invited?”

“Oh, yes. He’s not here yet, but we’re expecting him.”

Quinlan nodded, his eyes gone far away, and reached unconsciously for Murray’s hand. Murray, who hadn’t seen Corporal Tjaarda take a bullet to the back or heard him screaming on the stretcher that he couldn’t feel his legs, stepped out of reach for Ted’s own good. Then Quinlan was walking away, heading for the front desk without saying goodbye.

“So,” Murray asked when they were alone in their room, “what bazooka are they all worried about? Other than the one in your pants?”

Quinlan laughed and ran his hand through his hair, seeming to think about whether he should tell. Then he laughed again and said, “We had this raw little private, Dalin, who was supposed to carry a shoulder-mounted bazooka. Skinny kid, just barely made the height requirement and was probably wearing three pairs of boots to make weight. So he up and fucking drops it in the middle of a goddamn firefight. Pulled the trigger and just let it go. The shell missed me by about a foot. I was so mad, I walked right through the crossfire—didn’t get a scratch, either—and picked it up before Private Dalin was done pissing in his government issues. He took one look at me and started running. I fired a round over his head and it hit this cluster of Charlies, totally by accident. After that, I carried the bazooka and there was a hell of a lot less grumbling in the ranks. At least when I could hear.”

“What about Private Dalin? Did you report him?”

“Naw, he bought it a couple days later. Kids like that didn’t do too well in the bush.”

“I know I wouldn’t have,” Murray agreed.

“You had better things to do,” Quinlan murmured, as if Private Dalin hadn’t.

After a moment, Murray sat down on the bed and slipped off his shoes.

“It was a long drive, Lieutenant, and you didn’t sleep much last night. Come lie down with me for half an hour and we’ll be all rested when we go downstairs for lunch.”

Quinlan nodded, his eyes going distant as his mind wandered back in time. Still, he took off his shoes and jacket and stretched out beside his husband, offering his arm when Murray moved to cuddle against him.

“Are you still okay with this, Ted?”

“I better be. We’re here.”

“Yes, but I don’t have to be. Only one person’s met me and he probably doesn’t remember my name. I can just disappear, and if anyone asks, you can say I was called home for some reason.”

“No, baby, we’re not doing that. It isn’t you that I’m nervous about, it’s _them_. The only way you leaving would help is if I went, too.”

“You’ll be fine, Lieutenant. Once you’re down there telling stories and sharing memories with your men, it’ll be fun.”

“They ain’t been my men since nineteen seventy-two,” he murmured. “You’re the only man under my command these days.”

“Well, that’s okay, too.”

“Yeah. I think I like it better this way.”

***

The ringing phone woke them at a quarter past four. Murray reached for his glasses while Quinlan answered it, both of them too sleepy and confused to have a grip on their surroundings. When he realized Ted was talking to the staff sergeant slash major, Murray got out of bed and went into the bathroom. They’d slept through lunch and the men were gathered down in the lounge, wondering where the lieutenant was.

“Are we terribly late?” Murray asked, coming back into the room to change. He shuffled off his wrinkled beige slacks and stepped into the neat black ones that Cody had helped him buy. Cody loved to shop for clothes, no matter who would ultimately be wearing them, so Murray had a very nice suit for the occasion. Maybe _too_ nice, he thought, watching himself button his shirt in the mirror on the back of the door. Cody was terribly cutting edge these days, and he’d talked Murray into a trimly tailored black suit with a black shirt and tie. He was afraid that he looked like a mortician. But he had to admit that it wasn’t _bad_. The same black that would have made a heavier man look slimmer also served to blur the definition of his body and hide his sharp angles and awkward stance.

“Well, don’t you look snazzy?” Quinlan said, coming out of the bathroom in his uniform.

“You don’t think it’s in bad taste? I mean, for a military reunion?”

“No, I think it’s great. Respectful. And you’ll be able to hide in corners if you want.”

“Do you want me to hide?”

“Nope. I want you to fix my collar and then go have a drink with me.”

Murray straightened Ted’s shirt collar and folded it into his jacket. He surveyed his lieutenant with pride, running light fingers over medals and citations that he’d never seen before, that Quinlan was too proud to brag over, and marveled that the uniform still fit. This wasn’t the one he’d worn for Reserve duty; this was the one his men had last seen on a parade ground in the spring of seventy-two.

“You look pretty snazzy yourself, sir.”

“The pants are a little tight,” he said. “But it’s not bad. I guess all that salad and exercise was good for something after all.”

“I like to think so. Are you ready, sir?”

“You’re enjoying that a little too much,” Quinlan said with a grin. “All right, let’s go revisit my past.”

“It’s the LT,” Major Goldberg called as they walked into the lounge. The men had been drinking for half an hour now, and a round of mixed cheers and good-natured jeers went up. Some of them even raised their glasses, and Quinlan snapped a salute from the doorway. Then he walked straight up to the bar, ordered bourbon and branch and asked the bartender to make it a double. He turned around, raised his glass to the room, and knocked it back neat as you please. Murray asked for a draft and sat down on a stool to see what would happen next.

Within a few minutes, Quinlan had been swept away to join a group at a table, sitting between Major Goldberg and a young man who was occupying the most technologically advanced wheelchair Murray had ever seen. They started out quiet, but over the next hour, as Murray nursed his single beer and the others consumed multiple rounds of hard liquor, things got a lot more lively. Even the man in the wheelchair seemed to have a greater tolerance for drink than did Murray, but he supposed it was harder to judge tolerance when the drinker in question wasn’t able to stagger and fall down.

“So how come you didn’t bring your wife?” someone asked Ted, and that dragged Murray away from his contemplation of low-speed, single occupancy people transporters.

“What’s that?”

“Your wife. She didn’t come with you?” Major Goldberg repeated, nodding at the hand that held his glass. Quinlan looked down at his gold band and a flash of guilty confusion crossed his face.

“Divorced?” asked Corporal Tjaarda, from the other side. “I know about that, man. I wore my ring for a year after we signed the papers.”

“No, not divorced,” he said uncertainly. Why hadn’t he planned for this? He couldn’t have taken off the ring in front of Murray, but he could have planned something to say. She couldn’t make it? Visiting her mother? No, they’d ask her name and want to share photos. Dead? No, they’d commiserate. And besides, any lie would be disloyal to the man he loved, who was even now watching him to see what he’d say. Then he realized he was looking at Murray while he tried to figure it out. And they were looking, too.

“You’re not married, are you?” asked the paralyzed Corporal Tjaarda.

“Not like you mean, no.”

There was a long pause, through which conversation was clearly audible from other tables, and then Corporal Tjaarda shrugged and said, “Well, hell, it’s the nineties. Introduce him already. We didn’t come all this way to let a man drink alone.”

Quinlan was almost laughing with relief, but he managed to keep it to a slight smile as he signaled for Murray to come join them. Corporal Smithson slid over and made room for him to pull up a chair across from Ted and he was summarily introduced and welcomed into the group.

“LT says you’re a colonel?” Goldberg said and he nodded shyly. “Where’d you serve?”

“Baltimore. I was a Special Tactics and Weapons Specialist. I worked in Covert Programming and Systems Analysis. I—I never went overseas.”

Glances were exchanged that were hard to interpret, and Quinlan stepped in.

“Murray went to MIT at an age when most of us were still in grade school,” he said with a grin. “He’da been wasted over there, getting shot at like the rest of us.”

“Hey, yeah, you designed the MurDeke, didn’t you?” asked Sergeant O’Mara.

“That’s right. I was doing some fascinating work with lasers when I retired, but now I mostly write software and build surveillance equipment.”

“And you married this old fart?” Corporal Tjaarda laughed.

“He’s all right. Anyway, I outrank him. And he doesn’t mind killing spiders.”

“Shut up, kid,” Quinlan said fondly.

“Yes, sir.”

“You know,” Smithson said after a moment, “when we were all shipped home, Corporal Trimbull moved in with Private Jacobson. They came here together, too.”

“They always were close,” Goldberg remarked.

“That’ll happen on the battlefield for sure,” Tjaarda agreed.

Murray couldn’t help feeling judged for never having seen battle and sipped his beer with his eyes cast down.

“You guys wanna see something?” Quinlan said suddenly. “Give me your hand, Murray. No, the other one.”

He set down his glass and extended his left hand across the table. Quinlan gripped it in his right and pushed Murray’s sleeves up to his elbow, exposing the long scars on both sides of his forearm.

“Damn,” Smithson said with a low whistle.

“What the hell?” Goldberg said, half-admiringly. “Looks like a bayonet wound, doesn’t it?”

“It is,” Quinlan said, a trifle proudly. “Of our own M7s.”

“You get that in Baltimore?” Tjaarda asked, only joking a little.

“King Harbor, actually,” Murray said. “I’m—or I was—a private detective. I work with the agency part time, but this was when I was doing it full time. I was undercover, looking for information for a client, and this really nervous drug addict decided I was a cop. He served stateside like me, but he went out with a dishonorable discharge and he carried a bayonet so people would think he was a hero.”

“Real heroic, stabbing an unarmed PI,” Quinlan muttered, releasing his hand with a gentle pat. Murray blushed and pulled down his sleeves.

“It was very exciting, though,” he went on, not wanting to lose this feeling of camaraderie. “I mean, I was scared and it hurt. A lot, really, since it broke the bones. But my partners hardly ever let me do the good undercover jobs. Mostly I monitored the communication while they went after the bad guys.”

“You had to, kid. You think they could run your little gizmos or hack computers while you ran around with a gun and got shot at?”

“I’ve been shot at,” he said, a little defensively.

“Sure you have. And you’ve made your kills like a man,” Quinlan said, causing the other soldiers to look at the skinny colonel with a little more curiosity. But Murray ducked his head again and the subject was dropped.

The conversation turned to the old days, the horrors of war now made into amusing anecdotes so the men who had been there could laugh about it this afternoon and maybe sleep tonight. The time they caught Trimbull and Jacobson in the supply tent; Dalin and the bazooka; the village of women and children that welcomed them in and fed them extremely spicy soup that turned out to be composed largely of bovine testicles. Whether this was pro or anti-American behavior was never determined, though both theories had their supporters.

At six o’clock, dinner was served in the lounge and the talk went on while everyone who wasn’t too drunk to eat devoured prime rib and chicken. As soon as the dessert plates were cleared, the drinking recommenced in earnest and the stories got a lot more serious. Someone asked Quinlan about his leg, how long he’d been in the hospital and how well it had healed. He told a funny story that Murray had never heard about a nurse at Walter Reed, and they congratulated him on recovering well enough to become a cop. He appreciated their words, but it was hard to hear while looking at Corporal Tjaarda in his wheelchair. Quinlan had thought about him a lot over the years, feeling the unfairness of his own complete recovery while others had been crippled for life. He’d have settled for a limp—hell, an amputation—if it would have at least gotten the kid up on crutches.

Lost in those thoughts, he registered the sudden silence and spoke without thinking.

“I’m so sorry we couldn’t save you,” he said and Tjaarda’s eyes went wide.

“Hey, LT…” he whispered and Quinlan interrupted.

“It was my fault. I made you scout, didn’t I? I sent you ahead, so it was me decided you were gonna be the one to take a round if there was a round to be taken. And God knows how much of the damage was our fault, dragging you through the mud like we did, and two hours in that fucking jeep back to the worst front line hospital in all of Vietnam.”

“Yeah, well, that guy who cut me open wasn’t exactly Alan Alda, but it wasn’t your fault. You guys saved my life. A lot of boys got shot, LT, but not all of them got home.”

“That’s it, Jim? You’re just glad to be home? No anger, no resentment, no ‘what happened to my life’? Sorry, but I ain’t buying it.”

“Come on, LT, it’s been twenty years. I was done cursing your name by eighty-five. And when they came out with these nine hundred feature space shuttle wheelchairs, it got a lot better. Don’t get me wrong, I wouldn’t pick this if I had a choice, but goddamn, Ted. I’m alive. I have a house and a business, my wife left me but I’m in a good relationship now, and best of all, there’s no way they can make me go to war again.”

“Amen to that,” Smithson murmured.

“You know, Dalin was my friend,” Tjaarda went on. “Him and Mansfield and me, we went through boot camp together. Then Dalin took that bullet and Mansfield lost a leg to that landmine and then died in Hawaii. How in hell can I not be grateful?”

“Mansfield died?” Quinlan asked, surprised.

“About two weeks after you got hit. You’d probably have seen him at Pearl Harbor if he’d lived more than a couple days.”

“Fuck,” he muttered and drank off his shot. Murray reached across the table to take his hand and Ted smiled faintly, reassured.

“Never would’ve happened if you’d been there,” Goldberg said. “I was _not_ ready to be in charge when you left. Took us almost a month to turn into a cohesive unit again and it was a fucking mess. We’re lucky losses didn’t run higher.”

“You got us home,” Smithson said and silence fell over the table. There wasn’t much to say after that.

***

The party finally broke up at two in the morning and Quinlan took Murray off to bed, supporting him in the elevator because he’d just had to have that second beer. When Tjaarda proposed the final toast, no one could refuse and Murray downed a shot of whiskey that finished him for the night. Quinlan undressed him clumsily and they fell into bed in their underwear, cuddled close together to keep the dreams at bay.

Two doors down, Smithson was putting Tjaarda to bed, too.

“Funny thing,” Tjaarda said as his friend lifted him from his chair and laid him down carefully. “I never would have thought LT would show up here with a husband.”

“If it can happen for us, it can happen for anyone,” Bill Smithson said with a grin.

“We should’ve been honest. If Ted could do it, and Trimbull and Jacobson…”

“We can come out at breakfast if you want.”

“Oh, like I’m getting up for breakfast. Don’t forget to plug in my chair,” he added.

“Do I ever forget?” Bill sighed in mock frustration.

“All the time. So we can come out at lunch.”

“Whatever you want, babe. Now that we don’t have to be scared of the old man anymore, it makes no difference to me.”

Quinlan would have been highly amused by the idea of anyone altering their behavior from fear of him, but tomorrow he wouldn’t laugh. And when he was home again, alone in the shower while Murray happily unpacked in their room, he would be staggered by the fears of the men he had led so long ago. Men who even now wanted his respect badly enough to lie for it. And he would weep with gratitude for finally being able to set them free.


End file.
